In Jim Geraghty’s emailed Morning Jolt blast today, he quotes Kurt Schlicter of Townhall:
In 2014, the fact that their insurer is dumping their health insurance plan and making them pay twice as much for a crummier one — now that will get their attention. They will have an opinion on that, plus they will be plenty interested in who is responsible for it. And does anyone want to guess who is responsible for ensuring that the Scarlet “O” of Obamacare is tattooed right onto the forehead of every Democrat running in 2014? Three guesses, and if your first two are John and Lindsey you are wrong, wrong, wrong.
This wasn’t a defeat. Sure, the Democrats will cluck about it, and their media serfs will repeat the Journolist talking points du jour, but it doesn’t matter. They won nothing except the chance to allow Obamacare to fail even more spectacularly.
Congratulations, President Pyrrhus. A couple more “wins” like this one and we’ll be on our way to fundamentally changing America back.
Allahpundit asks, “How many people onstage with Obama today have successfully enrolled in ObamaCare?”
The White House communications team had three weeks to find 10-15 people who’ve actually enrolled in O-Care via Healthcare.gov to serve as human props for an Obama press conference on this subject. Three weeks. And yet, according to the WH’s own mini-biographies of the people invited to the Rose Garden today, just … three have successfully registered so far. Last week, Bob Laszewski estimated that no more than 20,000 people had managed to enroll in the site’s first 14 days or so online. If the White House had this much trouble finding a dozen or so for one of O’s biggest photo ops this year, I’ve got to wonder if the real number’s significantly less than that.
Byron York has reproduced the full White House release on today’s attendees. Among the lucky 13 is someone who’s “looking forward to enrolling for health coverage this fall,” someone who “recently began researching her options” on California’s state exchange, someone who “plans to comparison shop” on Healthcare.gov, and someone who’s “exploring what new coverage options will be available,” as well as a few people who are happy they can stay on their parents’ insurance under the new rules about age. All of which, ironically, is true to the spirit of today’s presser: In theory, this was going to be a “mea culpa” moment for O in which he explained in some detail what’s gone wrong with the site and set a timetable for when it would be running smoothly. Instead it was an infomercial for ObamaCare with a few perfunctory references to the “kinks” crippling Healthcare.gov. “There’s no sugarcoating it,” O said at one point about the site meltdown — except that the whole point of the presser was to sugarcoat it, right down to inviting people onstage who haven’t managed to actually register yet thanks to HHS’s Geocities-caliber tech. Says Peter Suderman:
Just a few weeks ago, Obama was telling people that the exchanges would be as simple to use as Amazon, or an online travel reservation site like Kayak.com. Now he’s telling people they must rely on a phone and paper process that is, at best, extremely slow.
Obama’s speech, in other words, was designed to tell people how Obamacare could work without the online exchanges. Which strongly suggests that he and the rest of the administration believe that, at least for the time being, that’s the only way it’s going to.
Oh, and the inevitable fainter at an Obama speech. Will the media ever call Mr. Obama on happening — purely randomly, I’m sure — at so many of his speeches? Though in this case, even the optics of that backfired on the president:
Oh, no. Obama’s speech was interrupted by a metaphor. Hope she’s okay.
— jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) October 21, 2013
Since I quoted both Allahpundit and Jim Geraghty above, I should wrap up the post on one of Allah’s patented exit questions, but allow Jim Geraghty to ask it: “Why Would the GOP Want Kathleen Sebelius Fired?”
Especially now that socialized health insurance for the 21st century is returning to its technological roots during its initial invention by Germany’s Otto von Bismarck and England’s Fabian Socialists:
Obamacare..The future of healthcare with paper and telephones.
— S.M (@redsteeze) October 21, 2013
(Brilliant Photoshop at top of post spotted at Twitchy.)
Update: At the Fiscal Times, Eric Pianin writes, “Obama Turns to High Pressure Sales Pitch to Save Obamacare.”
But shouldn’t President Draper, who claims that Mad Men is one of his favorite shows, understand the first rule of advertising: The underlying product has to be good enough to succeed on its own terms, or the salesman and his agency will be permanently discredited?
As ad man (and Mad Men series advisor) Jerry Della Femina wrote over 40 years ago in his classic book on advertising, From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising War, “There is a great deal of advertising that’s better than the product. When that happens, all that the good advertising will do is put you out of business faster. There have been cases where the product had to come up to the advertising but when the product fails to do that, the advertiser will eventually run into a lot of trouble.” Or to quote a commenter at Hot Air, “You owe Ron Popeil an apology. At least he delivered the goods.”
Heh, indeed.™
Incidentally, the woman who fainted today is a “Prospective [Affordable Care Act] Beneficiary,” according to “information from the White House, provided in advance of the president’s speech,” to further bring this post back full circle.
Oh, and pregnant and diabetic, to boot. “Yes, put pregnant, diabetic woman on stage at noon for 30 minutes. What could go wrong?”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member